Elizabeth Anne Watkins

Elizabeth is a Research Assistant at Tow and a PhD student at ColumbiaUniversity, studying the human factors of technological change in organizations. Trained as an organizational sociologist, her focus is on how people build mental models of algorithmic systems and how these models inform their changing workflow strategies. In prior work with Tow she's examined how journalists make decisions about their cybersecurity practices, and analyzed the ecosystem of digital marketing and how news publishers are implicated in how data flows are structured. Her current work with Tow is on how the news industry is incorporating the influx of values and tools from the technology sector. This work takes place along two axes, first in occupations within publishers (a report forthcoming on 'bridge roles' with Elizabeth Hansen of the Harvard Shorenstein Center), and second, a survey of how publishing tools and monetary support from the tech sector are adjudicated within and around journalistic ethics. 

Her dissertation work looks at how gig workers negotiate facial recognition technologies. She's an affiliate with the AI On the Ground Initiative at the Data & Society Research Institute and a member of the Columbia Center on Organizational Innovation.

 
Prior Tow work:
Guide to Advertising Technology (2018)
Journalists are rightly suspicious of ad tech. They also depend on it (2018)
When the Weakest Link is Strong: Secure Collaboration in the Case of the Panama Papers (2017)